Chapter 2 Summary

Joe and Ruth are working in the yard on a warm spring afternoon when Joe discovers a gopher eating one of his tomato plants. Joe gets a shotgun and kills the gopher before noticing that strangers have walked into the yard. Joe kicks it back into its hole and turns to introduce himself. The strangers are Marian and John Catlin, a young couple who have bought the empty cottage next door. Marian asks Joe why he would kill a gopher who was only doing what nature has taught him, arguing that Joe's tomato plant is not native to the area and should not have been a temptation to the creature in the first place. Marian expresses the opinion that nature should be left to grow and mature the way it was intended, rather than suffering the interference of humans. Joe argues that humans...